<p>Can excellent extracurricular activities make up for mediocre grades during the Freshman year of high school?</p>
<p>bumpppp…</p>
<p>Don’t worry about freshman year too much. As long as all the other years are up to par that shouldn’t be the deciding factor in your admissions. But, you do need stellar ECs and something that makes you special or unique.</p>
<p>^I agree with that. I ended up with a 3.2 freshman year, and I’m attending an ivy league college in the fall.</p>
<p>(P.S. People on this form at one point at the end of my sophomore year told me that places like American and Davidson were reaches, so don’t always listen to the advice you get on here, though it can sometimes be helpful, haha. It’s more comforting than anything else, I suppose.)</p>
<p>Ivy League schools are a reach for everyone.</p>
<p>As per your question, poor freshman year grades (yours are absolutely fine) won’t have dire consequences. I botched my freshman year and have yet received awesome offers from awesome schools. Schools want to see improvement, maturation, passion, and individuality. Yes, grades and test scores are important, but they serve more as an identifier of whether you’re capable of handling the courseload of a rigorous institution. What helps most is finding activities you really enjoy or movements you truly care for - things you’re passionate about - and diving into them. So keep that in mind (over the next few years, if you’re an underclassman, or for the next few days, if you’re a nervous Ivy-Leage-decision-awaiter like many of us).</p>
<p>My freshman year (ninth grade) doesn’t even show up on my high school transcript. It’s a good thing, because I did bad.</p>